


Stuck in a Cave

by Gyptian



Series: F.L.I.N.T. [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1940s, Best Friends, Captain America: The First Avenger, Character Study, Gen, Male Friendship, The Big Short Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-19 02:06:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14864604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: Bucky, Steve, a bottle of alcohol and drunken rhyming between best friends.Characterisation-wise this fits in a series but is a stand-alone character study.





	Stuck in a Cave

Two boys huddled on a bench at a kitchen table, sharing a blanket in a creaky, leaky, drafty apartment. They passed a bottle of moonshine back and forth. Steve, small and nimble, had liberated it from the landlady's stash in the basement cleaning closet.

 

In honour of Christmas, still two weeks away, they'd stuck four white taper candles in bottle caps and lit the first three. They cast a mellow gloom over the melancholy celebration. Bucky was due to report to base the next day at noon to ship out to the front.

 

They were down to the last third, Steve saw with some regret.

 

“If I're stuck inna cave,” Bucky slurred, still trying to come up with a good limerick. “If w're stuck inna cave, better not be with Dave, 'cause that fella is awful wet and wouldn't do anything but rant and whine and rave.” He glanced at Steve with woozy satisfaction. “S good, right? Think I can be a poet now?”

 

Steve paused, trying to draw his thoughts away from the shadows playing over handsome face and considering the words. “Dunna rhyme,” he finally muttered. “N plus, all y'other limerizz were also 'bout Dinky Dave. He ya new friend?” A dark worm started gnawing at Steve's gut, killing some of his buzz.

 

“Naaaaah,” declared Bucky with a big sweep of an arm, missing Steve's nose by a hair and flopping it down over his shoulder, cuddling him close. They sat in silence for uncounted minutes, swallowing liquid fire with numb lips and limp bodies, watching the candles burn down. Then Bucky straightened, stumbling to pose in the middle of the ramshackle. The shadows of his face twisted when he leaned with both hands on the table, becoming a satyr's face, smirking down on Steve. “I know,” he declared with a tongue stumbling to remember its elocution lessons. He struck a dramatic pose, one finger in the air, one hand splayed on his breast bone.

 

“If I were stuck in a cave

It'll be with what the good God gave

The company of my best friend Steve

Celebrating Christmas Eve

Cause we gon' be together till the grave”

 

Steve had rolled himself in a ball underneath the blanket to keep warm, but now felt aglow from the inside out, face grinning fit to split. Bucky plopped back onto the bench and tucked himself between the blanket and Steve.

 

(((*)))

 

When the three lit tapers had almost reached their bottlecaps, Steve confided, “I hate it. I feel I'm stuck in this cave, alone, y'know, where you're getting up and going out into the real world. I want to be out there too, seeing the sunlight, doing something real.”

 

Calloused fingers ruffled his hair and with a surprising lucidity, Bucky said, “You're going to _art school_ , Stevie... only one of our year. Y'have chance to do some'n good... like your ma dreamed of." He huffed. "Me, I'm only gonna be a body in a line of 'em." He mimed holding a rifle between their heads. "Gon' shoot a gun an' get shot at.”

 

Bucky sat back, gazing at the ceiling. “I loved the classes Sigfriedson let me sit in on... gettin' to dream of making real what was in my mind. Imagine that, lettin' other people see what you envision..." Wistfully whispered, "Makin' something outta nothing, close as you can come to God Himself.”

 

(((*)))

 

The worm in his gut grew, gnawing uneasily at the roots of his mind, upending everything. The next morning when he said goodbye and sat eating oatmeal staring at the single unburnt candle. The next year, while he got good grades and his teachers' praise.

 

He was just an artist in a cave, drawing shadows on the wall, meaningless illusions.

 

He couldn't stop trying to enter the army, even if it meant running the risk of going to prison.

 

The worm grew into a great roaring dragon, until he was desperate, just couldn't not. Erskine invited him into the Super Soldier program on the day he was supposed to graduate.

 

Any way he could, he had to get out of the cave of shadows. Out, out, _out_ , into the sunlight, where Bucky was, where the real things were.

 

(((*)))

 

In another millenium, he would mention he and Bucky had both been Irish and Catholic, with moms that worked hard to get them into a good school so they had a chance at a better life, until the war came and they both wanted to enlist.

 

He always felt the information was filed into a Captain America fact sheet, never imagined as the life of a real boy, the past of real man.

 

Superdense, superstrong fingers refused to achieve the fine control his nimble fingers had once had. Stark tried to tell him why, but it was little consolation. It was locked away inside his head.

 

He'd crawled out of the cave alright, into war and then straight into a brave new world. Reality was colder than any New York winter'd ever been, back when he'd had bird bones.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're unfamiliar with Plato's cave, here's the deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
> 
> In my head-canon, Steve and Bucky are the only children of Irish-American single moms who worked ridiculous hours so their sons would have a better life than what they'd scraped together during the Interbellum. They were a two-woman support group and their kids raised each other. So the boys got to go to a private Catholic school, while being otherwise rather poor and bullied (Steve's grudge started somewhere). Half their posh teachers'd have gotten a classical education and were more likely to remember Virgil than what their wives told them to bring home from the corner store. Yeah... So. Plato's Cave.
> 
> Timeline-wise, Bucky's on leave two weeks prior to Christmas 1942. They're both 24. Steve worked awhile after high school to save up, plus his mom died, before he succesfully applied to art school.


End file.
